Many people hated Rob Zombie’s 2007 Halloween remake (and its underrated sequel), especially us older fans of John Carpenter’s original 1978 masterpiece. The thing they most complain about is that unlike the suburban kid from the original film, Rob Zombie’s Myers is white trash. Although the original Halloween was one of the best movies ever made, I find Zombie’s remake (and its sequel) to be a fascinating alternative.

Many found it scarier when Myers came from the perfect family because it meant evil could strike anywhere. But I find it scarier to see this dysfuntional family that is so chaotic and unstable that they don’t even notice the evil that is gestating upstairs in their very own home.

Witness the breakfast scene:

William Forsythe is utterly hilarious as Ronnie White (Myers’s mother’s boyfriend): “BITCH I WILL SKULL FUCK THE SHIT OUT OF YOU!!”

LMAO! Zombie is a master of trashy white wit.

What the hell does “skull fuck” mean anyway? I just picture him penetrating her with his cranium.

I also like the chemistry between White and Myers’s slutty sister. Even though she sees him as a dirty old man, the two smile at each other when mocking Myers for stroking his rat or his mother for having abortions.

In a scene that never would have made the final cut today, White says of young Myers “he’s probably queer” and predicts he’ll “cut off his dick and change his name to Michelle”.

Like a lot of ageing white trash men with long hair, White seems a little schizo, which some think is the opposite of autism in some ways. Thus it makes sense that White would have the social intelligence to be the first to see how deviant young Myers really was. He was wrong about the details, and sadly quite bigoted against the LGBTQ2+, but in his own redneck way he was trying to warn people “this kids a monstrous freak who will grow up to do gruesome things”

Perhaps bullying evolved as a way of driving bad genes from the tribe. Many fans hate that young Myers was bullied in Zombie’s remake because it gave him a motive which undermines their preferred theme that Myers was pure evil. But I see the bullying as more a product than a cause of Myers’s freakiness.